


such selfish prayers (and i can't get enough)

by orphan_account



Category: Saturday Night Live RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-26 22:46:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She cringes a bit, shaking her head, wondering how this got so ridiculous. “God, why is this so stupid? Why are we being so stupid?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	such selfish prayers (and i can't get enough)

“Do you sometimes get weirded out playing a couple?”

“Why, because we slept together and it’s still awkward?” she asks, setting her beer down and prodding his thigh with her toes. He smiles, but it’s odd and tight and she can’t quite decide if it’s because he’s gotten too serious about the question or just because he’s too busy reading over his notes to pay proper attention to what she said. She prods him again. “Meyers.”

His hand closes around one of her feet and squeezes gently, his thumb sweeping across the thin bones, but he doesn’t look up.

“Hey. Seth. Stop being weird.” She sits up and scoots closer, her leg sliding down against his; it’s too late for this, waxing philosophical about sketch ideas and what they really mean, and she’s had about two too many beers for it to end normally. He looks at her, mouth turned up in the corners, and rests a hand on her knee.

“Sorry. It was a funny joke, I should have laughed.”

“No you shouldn’t have, it was lazy and bad and what you should have done is told me that.” She grips the hand on her knee briefly before patting it and jumping up off the couch. “It’s late and we have a show tomorrow, time to go?”

Grabbing her coat, she makes to put it on but his voice stops her. “Poehls?” He stands up, and her stomach does a funny little drop at the expression on his face, the awkward way he looks at his hands before he talks again. “Does it ever feel... kind of too close to not being a joke to you?”

She scrunches up her nose, rubs her fingers across her brow. Not the way she wanted this conversation to go. “Seth, I love you – like, die-with-you-in-a-rest-home love you – but this isn’t something I can deal with talking about right now.”

“Because it’s true?”

“Because it’s one in the morning and I want to go home. Because my husband is actually here for once and I’d like to see him.” Because if they talk about this for too much longer she’s going to end up saying things she’ll regret. “Okay?”

Seth nods, resigned, and her heart constricts. She relinquishes a little and walks towards him, wraps her arms around his middle. With her ear to his chest she can hear his heartbeat going a mile a minute. He sighs, the noise filling her ears, and slings his arms around her, his chin resting on her head.

After a minute she looks up at him and rests a hand on his cheek. “We’ll talk about this, okay?” When he nods she kisses the corner of his mouth, lingers for a second too long, then pulls away. “I’ll see you in a few hours. Love you, Meyers.”

“Love you too, Poehler.”

 

They don’t talk about it, of course. They never have, not when he climbed on her on a countertop after pretending to make out with her last week, his mouth on her neck; not when his hands were all over her during the key party sketch; not even when they both knew they were saying babe a few too many times than was cue-carded last year. It’s just not what they do.

Or it wasn’t, until it becomes unavoidable when they’re handed a sketch that requires them to have sex in a kitchen (off-screen, obviously, but nonetheless it brings up a few issues that they’ve been pushing away).

 

“You okay, Squirrel?” Tina asks, watching Amy spin on a swivel chair, thumbnail in her mouth as she reads over the sketch.

She looks up. “Funny sketch.”

“Yeah, sure seems like you’re enjoying it. Meyers is looking for you, by the way, should I tell him you’re here?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

It takes him less than five minutes to get to the office, and it looks kind of like he’s been running when he reaches the door, until he stops just short and looks like he’s completely forgotten his opening line.

“Funny sketch,” he says quietly, hand rubbing over the back of his neck.

She cringes a bit, shaking her head, wondering how this got so ridiculous. “God, why is this so stupid? Why are we being so stupid?” She’s not losing her best friend over a stupid sketch and some stupid looks and a couple of weird moments, why on earth did she think that was a thing that was happening?

Seth looks slightly taken aback. “What?”

“This is so dumb, Seth. What’s one sketch going to do?”

 

As it turns out, quite a lot.

 

For some reason she can’t stop thinking about the _that’s impossible, she’s on top_ line and all the various mental images it conjures for the entire day and all the way through dress, and when they disappear through the door on air she can’t help it. She pushes him on onto a nearby table and straddles him, her knees digging into the wood, trying to think of anything to blame for later (his stupid face, lack of sex, whoever decided this sketch was a good idea, etcetera). His hands fly to her hips as she leans over him, and she whispers into his ear before he can say anything. “Just giving Johnny something to react to,” then grinds down when she hears the sound cue, punctuating it with a yell. Seth’s hips jerk, his own yell coming seconds later, and she grins, hearing Maya’s line. Then Johnny bursts in and she waves, pretends everything’s fine, and as soon as he’s gone she grinds down again, not even entirely sure if this is actually real – did she really decide this was a good idea? Seth’s grip on her sides tightens tenfold, and he sits up, trying to kiss her. She puts a finger to his lips, “If you do that they’ll see it on camera when we go back out.”

His eyes burning into hers, he slowly bites the finger she has on his mouth, and she feels heat pool low in her belly before she comes to her senses and scrambles off him, messing up her hair and pulling on his hand to get him back out the door with her in time for their cue. He’s breathing a little hard when he speaks, but other than that she thinks mission accomplished and prepares to leave this sketch and everything about it behind. Put it down to a phenomenally bizarre moment of weakness, nothing more.

 

But as soon as she’s done avoiding him at the goodnights and packed up everything she needs in the dressing room, he’s at the door, expression unreadable.

“Good show, Poehls.”

“Oh, thanks. You too, as usual.” She hopes that’s the end of it, that this’ll be his little jibe and she can go.

He steps inside, looks around as though he’s never been there before. She feels uncomfortable in a way she’s never felt around him before, but she finds herself unable to say anything, just watches him close the door, lock it, and slowly make his way over to where she’s awkwardly gripping the back of a chair.

“Too bad about that sketch though.”

Amy’s always thought of herself as fairly dominant when it comes to her relationships with men, she likes to think she’s good at getting the upper hand, but for some reason with Seth staring her down like this she can’t quite make her words come out right. “Oh—what... what sketch?”

“Oh I don’t know, the one where you decided to climb on top of me in some crazy attempt to get me hard feet away from several hundred people?” he steps closer as he talks, his voice low, until she can feel him breathing.

“Right. That sketch. Funny joke, wasn’t it? Ha ha ha?” _Get it together, Poehler_.

Seth runs the back of his hand up and down her bare arm, goosebumps rising on her skin from the touch. He leans in close. “It felt pretty serious to me. What happened to ‘it’s just a sketch’?”

She lets his name hiss through her teeth, trembling involuntarily at his proximity, the timbre of his voice. “Seth...” Since when was he able to do this to her?

“I knew it wasn’t just me.”

Of course it wasn’t, it never has been, she’s just had a thousand more reasons to try and ignore it every time it comes up. “I should be going.”

He shakes his head. She knows that if she really wanted to leave, he’d let her, but truthfully she wants to know what happens next. Truthfully, all she can think about is the feel of him under her and his teeth around the flesh of her finger, like a pulse through her quickening blood. As he crowds her into the back of the chair, she realises she’s never actually kissed him before. There have been the stupid sketches and mashing their faces together during monologues and so many fucking _allusions_ , but they’ve never really done it for real. And because she figures it’s going to happen within the next ten seconds anyway, she closes the tiny gap between their mouths and lets Seth catch up, his inhale sharp as he realises what’s happening.

Then, there’s no stopping him; he’s all insistent, sliding tongue and hands, gathering her up and setting her down on the counter behind them, stepping between her legs. His kisses are wet, his tongue heavy, and his body is hot and hard against hers. He runs a hand down her spine and she arches into him, her fingers uselessly bunched into the sides of his shirt. This shouldn’t be happening, objectively it’s gross and skeevy and any other synonym she can think of and so not the type of thing you bring home to tell at the dinner table – but then, she doesn’t really have a dinner table and for some puzzling, concerning reason, this feels so wonderfully right.

She shivers when he skips his fingers over her ribs, his thumbs pushing the underwire of her bra until it gives, sliding up and away so he can rub at a nipple, garnering a whimper. With her eyes closed, she wonders if he’s watching them in the mirror or just watching her react to him as he slides a hand down her stomach – either one is a turn-on – and she sucks in a gasp as his fingers pop the button of her jeans, his knuckles brushing the skin of her abdomen.

“What were you saying about this sketch not doing anything?” he murmurs, teeth grazing over her jaw.

“Shut up, we were still being stupid.”

“Still _are_ being stupid, really,” he replies, fingers dipping past the waistband of her underwear and finding slippery purchase beneath. She cries out, moaning with every stroke of his fingers, her own fingers clenching around his forearms, and he chuckles. “Why does it not surprise me even a little that you don’t shut up during sex?”

“Have you noticed where your hand is, Meyers? It’s not— _ohmyfucking shit fuck_ —” she grinds down, trying to trap his fingers so they keep doing whatever the hell they’re suddenly doing, and tries to remember the mechanics of belt buckles at the same time. Her fumbling finally pays off, and he takes his hand out of her pants long enough to get both their jeans off and let her pull his shirt over his head, and the clarity she gets from not having his fingers circling her clit makes her freeze.

“Did you by any chance just think ‘what are we doing?’?” he asks, his hand sticky on her thigh, the other one thumbing her collarbone.

“Fucking is what we’re doing, Seth, it’s more like... why, as friends and co-workers, did we think this was a good idea?”

“We didn’t.”

And as his hand slithers further up her thigh, she can’t really argue with that logic.

It’s frenetic when she finally gets his underwear off and lets him slide into her, jerking when she rolls her hips, and her hand leaves a smear against the mirror when she tries to find a grip on it as he thrusts harder, her moans driving him on.

“It probably sounds like someone’s watching a porno in here,” she breathes, hiking her leg up higher and whimpering when he hits a certain spot.

He must be close, she thinks, because he has to grit his teeth before he speaks. “God, Amy, you are actually the most talkative person I’ve ever met.”

“You totally love it.”

He kisses her, sloppy and biting, and presses on her clit until she comes and he follows a few seconds after, almost collapsing on top of her.

In the aftermath (because afterglow is a stupid word), her head resting on his chest, the realisation that she doesn’t really know where to go from here dawns.

 

Then, in a unique and record first, they actually stop talking to each other for a few days. She tries to tell herself it’s just because she’s embarrassed she let it happen, and it definitely is partly that, but mostly, terribly, it’s just because she really, really wants to do it again.

 

It’s too much one night, they’re late into a table read and he’s just too close, the only thing she can concentrate on his cologne, his thigh pressed up against hers, the shudder of his laugh.

As soon as there’s a lull, she excuses herself hastily, doesn’t even look at him as she heads out the door.

 

He finds her about thirty seconds later, expression concerned when he sees her leaning up against the wall outside.

“Since when do you smoke, Poehler?”

She smiles, or tries to – it comes out more like a grimace if she’s honest, and holds it out for him to take. “I only ever carry one or two. For moments, um, like this. Thought you knew me well enough by now, Seth.”

He slips the cigarette from between her fingers and she expects him to throw it away. Instead he takes a long drag and hands it back to her. “Guess with all the weed you get through it’s not exactly a surprise,” he says on exhale, smoke rasping his voice.

“Mmmmm,” she closes her eyes, “do you know how good that would be right now?”

She feels him watching her, but she can’t quite face looking at him yet so she keeps her eyes closed, head resting on the wall behind her.

He clears his throat. “Actually I think Forte left a joint in my car a couple of weeks ago, do you want to see if it’s still there?”

Her eyes snap open. “ _Hell_ yeah.”

 

When Seth produces a slightly battered joint from the back of his glovebox she literally groans with joy. “God bless whoever decided Orville Willis Forte the Fourth should leave weed in your car and forget it was there.” She lights it and slides down the door on the first drag, resting on her haunches. “Oh my god, this is the best thing ever. _Shit_.”

It doesn’t take long for that familiar envelopment of being completely, totally wasted to filter through her, and she slumps down next to Seth on the ground, forgetting for a moment why she came outside in the first place. “Did we actually ditch a table read to get high?”

He chuckles. “Well. Technically. Like if you wanted to summarise our evening for a – let’s face, it probably small-budget – movie synopsis then yes, you could go with ‘two friends who obviously don’t care all that much about their jobs ditch a table read to get high in a carpark’.”

Smiling, she rubs her fingers into her eye. “My face feels small.”

“That’s because it is small.”

She cackles, then stubs out the last of the joint under her shoe and grabs Seth’s hand. He laces his fingers through hers, caresses her skin with the pad of his thumb. “Things got weird.”

“They did.”

“I still love you.”

He squeezes her hand, then brings it to her mouth and kisses her fingers. “You too, Amy.”

She wonders if it would be a good idea to kiss him right now, if being high would make a difference, whether his mouth would taste guilty or not. She looks at his lips, the jut of his nose, his eyelashes resting over his closed eyes.

They hear footsteps and she breaks out of her thoughts, then Tina’s voice echoes around the vehicles surrounding them, “Seth? Amy?”

“We’re here!” Amy calls, letting her hand slip from Seth’s.

Tina appears around a car and as soon as she spots them Amy knows she’s judging them appropriately. “Oh my god, did you dummies get high? Seriously?”

Seth looks sheepish, but when Amy looks at him she can’t help laughing. Tina rolls her eyes, holds out a hand.

“Come on. Let’s hide you in a room somewhere until you’re sane enough to read over the sketches you got given in your really, really suspicious by now absence.” She hauls Amy to her feet, not letting go of her hand, and starts dragging her away from the car.

“Wait, Betty, you gotta let Seth catch up.”

Tina sighs, stops until Seth’s locked his car (“They key goes in the teeny hole, Meyers! Then you turn it so robbers can’t get in!”) and has started walking toward them, then she carries on again and doesn’t stop or let go of Amy’s hand until they’ve reached her office and she’s able to lock them inside it.

“You can come out when everyone else has gone home,” she says, rolling her eyes at the two of them collapsing on her couch. Amy hears the door lock behind her, and turns to Seth, who is slightly out of focus.

“Do you think we’re in trouble?”

“Only with Tina.” He’s playing with her hand again. “Do you think since we’re already in trouble with her, that it will be fine if we make the most out of the time we’re stuck here by doing things in her office we probably shouldn’t?”

“Like leave her dirty notes?”

“Well, yeah, that’s one option I suppose...”

 

Naturally, they have sex on her couch. (And leave her dirty notes. And draw pictures on her little whiteboard. And make paper animals that look like they’re fucking each other from behind. They also try to figure out her computer password but regrettably it’s not ‘ilovejeff’ or ‘amyandsetharehot’ or anything along those lines. Which sucks balls, obviously.)

 

It goes like that for a while, they find an excuse, debate it a little, then sleep together and go back to normal. It becomes so much of a habit she barely feels the guilt anymore. It’s never serious, it never strays to _making love_ because that term is ridiculous anyway, and they can both pretend it doesn’t mean as much as it does. After a while, they can even joke about it, Update bits inevitably turn into sex jokes anyway, and their little (huge, monumental) indiscretions slip into normality after Seth takes the head writer job.

 

“Ooh, we have to do one about that having sex in your sleep thing, that is too good.”

“I know we’re in a high rise building and all, but could you put your pants back on now? The door isn’t locked anymore,” Seth says offhandedly, pen between his teeth as he reads through the newspaper.

“Pants are the worst, Seth.”

“Right up there with getting fired.”

She huffs and grumbles and mutters obscenities at him as she tugs on her jeans, and he raises an eyebrow. Walking over to him, she presses her lips to his, fingers resting on his chin. “I guess we’re lucky I have bills to pay.”

“Boats to purchase.”

“Six more houses.”

He pulls her into his lap and she grins, rests her nose against his neck. It’s too easy to be comfortable with him.

 

They say it takes twenty-one days to break a habit.

She leaves for double that and when she comes back it’s like she never left, never gave up the addiction. Everything is familiar and safe and strangely _calms_ her, despite the way he makes her senses flare every time she’s around him. They fall straight back into routine – or at least, a new version of routine, and she smiles into his skin when he pulls her into a hug in the host dressing room, September ’10, saying _good to see you, Poehls_ like he can’t imagine being anywhere else. (Quietly, with the beat of his heart under her chin, neither can she.)

 

It’s weirder now though, knowing they watch each other every week on tv but talking only in text messages or phone calls unless she’s in town. It’s harder to grip his hand during the good bits on Game of Thrones through a computer screen, too.

 

During lunch on set one day she’s jotting notes in her script while trying to manoeuvre yoghurt from her bowl to her spoon to her mouth without looking, when Adam chuckles softly next to her and nudges her with his elbow. A blob of yoghurt lands on one of her hastily-highlighted lines. “What?” she asks, scooping up the blob with her finger and sucking on it.

“You know all your buddy Seth seems to do is fill up my Twitter feed with how much he loves you?” he replies, still looking at his computer screen.

“What?” she repeats, trying to move her chair closer and suddenly concerned that Seth is writing love poems for thousands of strangers on Twitter to see.

“Well, I mean, it’s mostly stuff about the show but—”

She rolls her eyes, should have known that he was exaggerating, and goes back to her yoghurt. “Are you done with your disgusting hyperbole, Adam?”

“But he was talking about your sad movies article,” he says despondently, closing the tab. She covers a smile with her spoon when she hears his tone and makes a mental note to talk to Seth about what he puts on the internet in future.

 

It will always be like this, she thinks, like Romeo and fucking Juliet, only maybe they won’t _literally_ die like that at the end. But that might be okay with her, possibly , as long as no one feels like their life is ruined and they don’t end up on Cheaters. (Her morals have always been a little askew.)


End file.
